Progeny (Stargate Atlantis)
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| “Progeny” | |
|---|---|
| Stargate Atlantis episode | |
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| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 05 |
| Guest stars | David Ogden Stiers as Oberoth John O'Callaghan as Niam David Nykl as Dr. Zelenka Chuck Campbell as Technician |
| Written by | Carl Binder |
| Directed by | Andy Mikita |
| Production no. | 305 |
| Original airdate | August 11, 2006 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Sateda" | "The Real World" |
| Episode chronology | |
"Progeny" is an episode from Season 3 of the science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
After discovering an Ancient outpost with a gate address in its database, Elizabeth Weir joins Colonel Sheppard's team on a mission to Asuras, a world inhabited by a society of millions. They are an advanced people, and it doesn't take the team long to conclude that they are (unascended) Ancients. Their home is very much Lantean in design. Their leader is Oberoth, a powerful, arrogant man.
The team also meets a more quiet, sensitive Asuran leader named Niam, who brings the team before the Asuran High Council. There Oberoth explains that they are an off-shoot from the Ancients who long ago inhabited Atlantis. Though their race was once united, the Asurans left when the Lantians did not heed their counsel during the war with the Wraith. The Asurans resettled on this world thousands of years ago.
Weir and Sheppard challenge Oberoth about the persistent threat of the Wraith, and are amazed to hear that the Asurans have a plan to completely eradicate them from the Pegasus Galaxy. But he will not share the details with them. Oberoth is intensely curious, however, when he learns that Weir's team has set up a base of operations in the Pegasus Galaxy, though she is careful not to reveal that it is Atlantis. She hopes the Asurans might spare some Zero Point Modules in trade, since they are able to make them and have an abundance of them.
The negotiation doesn’t go well, since Oberoth believes that the Atlantis team has nothing worth trading for. But he is surprised to find out that Dr. Weir requires a ZPM, and suspects the city is of Lantean design. Nevertheless, Oberoth tells her that they have none to spare and wouldn't depart with any. Unable to get a ZPM, Dr. Weir and her team plans to leave the Asuran city.
But when the team is ready to depart through the gate, Oberoth shows his true colors. He orders his security guards to seize them. The team is restrained and put in a holding cell. When Niam brings them food, however, they are able to quickly and easily escape. Stealing a Puddle Jumper, the Atlantis team dials Atlantis and flies through the Stargate, arriving in Atlantis safe and sound. Soon, though, Atlantis comes under bombardment from 8 Wraith ships, and 15 more are on the way. Weir orders them to dial Earth and set the self-destruct. However, automated systems were damaged in the initial strike. Unable to give themselves enough time, Sheppard stays behind to activate the auto-destruct.
But just as the auto-destruct is about to go off, Sheppard wakes up: his mind has been probed by Asurans, who now know the gate addresses of both Atlantis and Earth. Sheppard, surrounded by his unconscious companions, and still in the cell, is surprised that they are still in Asuras, but a horrified Mckay reveals that never left. What's more, the Asurans are not humans: they're Replicators. When the rest of the team awakens, Niam reveals that they are in space. The Asuran city is an Ancient city ship, like Atlantis, and with their wealth of Z.P.M.s they are able to make it fly. The ship enters hyperspace, heading for Atlantis. They will finish what they started, destroying the original home of their creators.
The Asurans, as Niam reveals to Dr. Weir, are not biologically Lantian. They are artificial lifeforms that evolved from a Lantean experiment to create powerful and aggressive nanites to attack the Wraith on a cellular level ("Hot Zone"). But the microscopic creatures came together to form increasingly larger and more complex organisms, eventually imitating their creators to become human in appearance. The Asurans begged the Lanteans to remove the aggression program, but they refused, having put safe guards up, and desperate for a weapon. When the Lantians realized their experiment had gotten out of hand, they attacked this new race with their fleet of warships and nearly wiped them out.
Weir is stunned, and McKay suspects that the Ancient experiment may have been the genesis of the Replicators that SG-1 and the Asgard battled in our own galaxy. Those mechanical beings were created by an android that was invented by a mysterious scientist (SG-1: "Menace"), possibly one of the Lantians who resettled in the Milky Way galaxy after the war was lost. These Replicators later evolved into human forms, made up of billions of nanites (SG-1: "Unnatural Selection"). Weir feels compassion for them, despite what they truly are.
But Niam is not like Oberoth. He is one of a few among them who still wishes to imitate his creators, to reach ascension, as they did, and so equal them and join them (Despite the fact that they are machines). But killing the inhabitants of Atlantis surely cannot help them reach enlightenment. In fact, Niam believes that the only way it is possible is for Dr. McKay to do what they themselves are unable to do, and which the Lanteans long ago refused to do: rewrite their aggressive nature out of their base code. He wishes to quell a rage that is built into his very nature. In return, he will stop Oberoth from attacking Atlantis and help in Earth's fight with the Wraith. McKay manages to successfully reprogram Niam, but the team cannot trust Oberoth to call off the attack, even if he is reprogrammed. Because of this, the team decides to destroy the Asuran city-ship before it can reach Atlantis. McKay succeeds in reprogramming Niam by overwriting his aggressive nature. Then he stumbles on a major discovery.
McKay sees that the Asurans are connected through a subspace network and inserts a glitch that will paralyze all of the Asurans for several minutes. The team takes advantage of this by programming the ship's ZPMs to overload. Unfortunately, the Asurans begin to override the glitch and try to stop the team. Ronon and Sheppard try to slow them down, but the Asurans are apparently impervious to conventional weapons and Ronon's blaster can only stun them at maximum power. They manage to escape on a Puddle Jumper with Niam, and destroy the Asuran city-ship before it attacks Atlantis, but the Asurans remotely reset Niam in retaliation. The reset Niam reverts to his aggressive nature and attacks Weir, forcing Sheppard to launch him out into space. The final scene depicts the now-aggressive — and still alive — Niam floating in space above Atlantis.
[edit] Trivia
- Mckay states in this episode that it was probably the Asurans who made the nanite virus that nearly killed a third of the Atlantis expedition in the Season One episode "Hot Zone".
[edit] Goofs
- When Sheppard is having his mind probed, he gets in the Jumper without his vest, but in the next shot he has his vest on. This mistake is more likely within the canon of the show since Sheppards mind was being probed at the time and reality could be more altered
[edit] External links
- Official Stargate Atlantis site. MGM. Visited June 8, 2006.
